Vulcan's View Special: Oh, the Volcanoes I've Seen

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Vulcan's View Special: Oh, the Volcanoes I've Seen

The summer deluge of field and labwork continues for me. This weekend, I leave for California yet again, this time to traipse around Lassen Volcanic National Park to find some new samples and to visit the SHRIMP-RG lab at Stanford to work on some previously sampled Lassen lavas. So, in the spirit of that fieldwork, I put together a bit of "this is your (field) life" with some of the volcanic terranes I've visited over my geologic career. They range from ancient volcanoes that have been mashed and mangled by millennia of tectonic action to eruptions that occurred less than 100 years ago. Enjoy!

Vinalhaven Island, Maine

This is where it all started, in a small island off the coast of Maine. I did the fieldwork my undergraduate research thesis on the shores of Vinalhaven, looking at a small, shallowly-intrused basalt (diabase, to be exact) that is part of a volcanic-plutonic package of rocks that date from Silurian. So, I got my start on very old volcanism, but even in these 400 million+ year-old rocks, I saw some great volcanic features, including a gorgeous peperite, accetionary lapilli and rhyolite domes (in the unit above the Vinalhaven Diabase) ... and that's not even the most famous geologic feature on the island. That might be the "pillow piles" of gabbro within the Vinalhaven pluton.
Fondest memory: Watching seals frolic while sampling on the coastline.
Image: Landsat image from September 9, 2010. USGS/NASA.

Aucanquilcha, Chile

I did my Ph.D. fieldwork in the high Andes of northern Chile, near the Bolivian border. This shot shows much of the area around Volcán Aucanquilcha, a Quaternary to Recent volcano that is part of a larger volcanic complex that dates back to ~11 million years ago. Aucanquilcha's summit sits at a 6,176 meters (20,262 feet) above sea level. However, with the overall high elevation of the Andean plateau in this part of Chile, the relief from the surrounding topography is only ~2,100 meters (~7,100 feet). Much of the volcanism at Aucanquilcha has been thick dacite lava flows, although a small pyroclastic flow deposit can be found off the northwestern flank of the volcano (like a dome collapse from Cerro Negro) and a debris avalanche deposit lies to the east of the volcano.
Fondest memory: Stumbling across what might have been an Inca road on the side of Aucanquilcha.
Image: Landsat image from June 6, 2013. USGS/NASA.

Crater Lake, Oregon

So, I didn't do any fieldwork as such at Crater Lake, but I was a ranger for the National Park Service at the Oregon volcano during 2001. Being able to spend a summer living on a volcano meant I got to explore lots of the nooks and crannies that most tourists don't see and let me tell you, there are some great places to see off the beaten path (which, at Crater Lake is the Rim Road). Probably the best advice I tell people is to take the time to hike to the top of Mt. Scott on the eastern side of the caldera -- the summit affords a stunning view of the lake and Wizard Island, the cinder cone that pokes above the surface of the lake.
Fondest memory: Being able to lead boat tours in the lake multiple times each week.
Image: ISS image taken February 23, 2003. NASA.

Three Sisters, Oregon

I've worked on both ends of the Three Sisters in Oregon over the course of my graduate work and postdoctoral research. On the north end, I was a field assistant for Mariek Schmidt when she was working on her Ph.D. fieldwork at North Sister and the allied basaltic volcanoes that surrounding the oldest of the Three Sisters. I've also done some fieldwork on the southern end of the Three Sisters, looking at Rock Mesa and the Devil's Hills, the youngest rhyolite domes of the complex. This image shows those flat, grey domes in contrast to the green surroundings at the bottom of the issue, while the basaltic lava from places like Collier Cone and Three-in-One cone (the Matthieu Lake Fissure) can be seen in black near the top of the image.
Fondest memory: Donkey on the loose!
Image: Landsat image from September 9, 2011. USGS/NASA.

Villarrica, Chile

While I was at the 2004 IAVCEI meeting, I was able to visit Villarrica, with its active lava lake. If you have ever been in Pucon, you'd know that you can step out on any clear night and look up to see the glowing summit of the volcano. In this 2010 image, you can see some ash from the summit deposited on the snowy slopes of the volcano in a small, dark stream to the southeast. A small steam plume can also been seen from the main summit, coming from the lava lake.
Fondest memory: Flaming volcano cakes and dancing children at the dinner for the IAVCEI meeting.
Image: ISS image taken March 11, 2010. NASA.

Hood, Oregon

Mount Hood can be seen from much of the Portland area in Oregon and will make a great backdrop for the 2017 IAVCEI scientific assembly. When visiting Hood, you area struck with how beat up the volcano looks, which might fool you into thinking that the volcano is old. However, there have been a lot of activity at Hood over the last few hundred years -- but nothing confirmed since 1865.
Fondest memory: Actually, from a glacialogy field trip I took to Hood, but touching a glacier is great.
Image: ISS image taken September 12, 2007. NASA.

Laacher See, Germany

Many geologic meeting include, not surprisingly, great field trips. When I attended the 2007 Goldschmidt meeting held in Cologne, Germany, I was able to visit the Laacher See. This inocuous-looking lake in western Germany was the source of one of the largest eruptions in continental Europe over the last 15,000 years. The massive ~12,900 year old eruption from the Laacher See spread ash over much of central Europe and the small carbon dioxide seeps found along the edge of the lake betray the still-active magmatic system underneath the volcano (but no, Laacher See is not "ready to blow".)
Fondest memory: Watching Gernard Worner wade to his knees to sample volcano gases with an improvised sampling device (as known as a soda bottle).
Image: Landsat image from September 27, 2011. USGS/NASA.

Tarawera, New Zealand

After I finished by dissertation work in Chile, I moved onto a completely different part of world to look at how magma is generated. This time, it was the Okataina Caldera Complex in New Zealand and specifically at Tarawera. The rhyolite dome complex (center of image), frosted with a veneer of basaltic tephra, is the youngest volcanic feature in the Okataina area. The rhyolite domes are only a little over 700 years old and have pyroclastic flow deposits that spread out over the landscape and into Lakes Tarawera, Rotomahana and Rerewhakaitu (bottom of image). All these rhyolite deposits are mantled by the basalt from the 1886 eruption of Tarawera that created the Waimangu geothermal valley that extends to the southwest of the volcano and create the row of craters across the top of Tarawera (through the ~1305 AD rhyolite domes themselves).
Fondest memory: Traveling to every cinder mine in the Taupo Volcanic Zone.
Image: Landsat image from June 23, 2013. USGS/NASA.

Tongariro, New Zealand

During the same trip I made to New Zealand to work on Tarawera, I also visited Tongariro on the south end of the Taupo Volcanic Zone. Now, this was before the recent activity at Tongariro, but the views of Ngauruhoe from Tongariro Crossings were spectacular with the youngest cone of Tongariro showing off some of the lava flows from its most recent eruptions in the late 1970's. You can see the slopes of Ruapehu on the left edge of the image as well.
Fondest memory: Almost dying when we decided to do Tongariro Crossings on a day that ended up being close to 40C.
Image: ISS image from October 23, 2010. NASA.

Mineral King, California

Starting with my first research student here at Denison, I returned to ancient volcanic rocks with my ongoing research at Mineral King in California. Here, a sliver of crust (dark red/brown in the image) has been incorporated into the Sierra Nevada Batholith, a large body of granite and allied magmas. The pendant, as it is called, has a number of rhyolite units from the Jurassic and Cretaceous that record a period of active caldera volcanism along the western margin of North America and record how the crust along the west coast had changed over a period of over 60 million years.
Fondest memory: Waking up to the sound of coyotes on both sides of the valley while backcountry camping.
Image: Landsat image from June 30, 2013. USGS/NASA.

Lassen Peak and Chaos Crags, California

Next week, I'll be in Lassen Volcanic National Park doing fieldwork with one of my current research students, trying to track the evolution of the magmatic system that has fed volcanism in the Lassen area for the last ~800,000 years. This image captures the range of that volcanism, with the dark basaltic andesite lava field from the ~1666 AD eruption of Cinder Cone (top right) to Chaos Crags and Lassen Peak (pink area on left side). Next year marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the last active period at Lassen Peak that produced an impressive eruption during May 1915.
Fondest memory: Snow! And lots of it! In early October!
Image: Landsat image from September 2, 2011. USGS/NASA.

Kilauea, Hawaii

To round things out, just this last spring I went out to Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawaii and got to poke some lava flows, along with checking out the ocean entry at the ever-erupting volcano. I'm lucky that as a geologist, my job entails traveling around the planet to see these visits (from the ground) and find out how volcanoes behaving similarly and differently. Really, that is why you become a geologist, to go out and examine the rocks to unlock the inner workings of the planet because every piece of the landscape tells a story about how it formed. Whether the rocks area hundreds of millions of years old or erupted in the last century, they record the changes they felt as they formed in a magmatic system, so the better we can understand modern volcanoes like Lassen, the better we can unravel what might have been happening in the distant past. It is all a book and the only way to read it is to go out there and find the pages.
Fondest memory: What else? Poking an active lava flow.
Image: Taken June 27, 2013. NASA Earth Observatory.